´¯`•. March 05, 2017

Good Morning. I’m trying to get back on schedule. Once upon a time, there was Shabbat Saturday and Update Sunday, but then… I dunno what happened, but no more update Sunday and I was posting Shabbats at something like 10pm, just cuz… it’s been a wreck. But I ditched both penpals this week, and find that I have a TON more time. (I’m a little torn about the D/s guy – he was nice. But I felt like he was bored with NOT talking D/s with me, and I honestly, I knew from the start that I wasn’t what he wanted to write to.) The total truth? I was ruined on writing to penpals. As much as I want to, I can’t, now. It’s like diaring – after my mom took and trashed all of my diaries, I couldn’t write in a book or journal, anymore. Same thing here.

Feeling Post-y! Some of you (the FeedReaders, bwahahahaIlovethat name) probably have noticed that there was an influx of posts the past few days. I’ve played a small round of ‘catch-up’, hereabouts. I also thought about working on getting photos off my phone to do MORE catch-up, hereabouts, but it stopped at getting the photos from camera to PC. Then everything got very overwhelmping (I took 351 pictures in December?!?!?!!) and I allowed myself to be immediately shiny-ed, so as to avoid a serious mental stress-out. TMI, but there it is. Bottom line: There are a few new posts to scroll back and read. They’re pretty good… but then, I’m biased. 😛

My Mother. Working backwards (which is easiest), we stopped in at my mother’s, last night. During our last hellish fight just before X-mess, she’d made me promise to contact her, “and not five months from now”. Well, last night we were half a mile from her house, and… and… I keep my word. Okay? It’s a thing with me. If I promise to do something, it *WILL* happen, regardless of cost to me. So I called my mom, said we were nearby, asked if they were home, and we went over there for an hour.

StOopidity Sucks. My mom has set up a shrine to dead people in her house. It’s disturbing, but not my business. She spent the whole time with my kids in another room, while I got to talk to Pop and my sister (who… No. Just no. ‘Spending time with my sister’ is down there with ‘throwing up spaghetti’ on my list of fun things to do.) Anyhow, apparently my mom spent the whole time going from kid to kid, saying “You know I love you. I miss you so much. This makes my heart so happy. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I really do love you…” (ad nauseum). My kids weren’t impressed, and just wanted her to STOP… which of course doesn’t happen. As for the triplets, they sat and stared at me, the whole time. Mostly because I was the only one talking. I talk a lot when I’m nervous and it’s usually in 3-part harmony with myself and sign language thrown in for good measure. It… was not fun.

Car Conundrum. We were out looking at cars. I’m still trying to figure out what to do about our car situation… but at the moment, *He* has told me to wait, so that’s at least somewhat of an answer. (There was an ‘A’ in the sky with the cross line out there, moving away, like a cart before the horse at the end of the trip. I took that as our answer. I’m moving too fast on this, and need to wait). So, we will wait. I’m kind of thinking it’d be good to hang out until tax return time, at the least.

Recovery Night. HomiGAWSH, I forgot that after spending time with my mom, there’s a 24-hour exorcism period, in which my children’s heads spin around and copious amounts of emotion hit the fan. Owen was absolutely SHOT after the visit – he went into full-on psycho mode, and ended up sobbing hysterically by bedtime. This is SO out of character for my stalwart little guy. I kept my word, but no way in HELL will I be putting my kids through that again. It was U.G.L.Y. last night. And I hate it. Hate it.

Events, Eventually. We did a LOT of stuff, this week, but there’ll be posts about it coming up. See, if I write about it here, then there’s no point in doing the whole blog with pictures thing that would be so much better than just a blip in a patchwork blog. So you’ll find out about our events, eventually. 🙂 I can tell you that Flick’s Family Films is back on, again, and we went to see ‘Storks’. The movie isn’t good – it makes no sense, and is badly done (and moves too fast for my eyes to follow). But the wolves…!! Homigoodness, just watch the wolves.

Anna & AntiVirus. Good merciful heavens, have I spent a lot of time with anti-virus programs, lately! In January, our anti-virus expired, and I wasn’t fond of it, so we decided to do something else. (It was ‘Bull-guard’, a UK anti-virus that decided FOR me what I wanted to look at/open. Um, no.) So Brian suggested TrendMicro, which is what his work uses. HomiGAWSH, did that totally destroy our run-time and crash ALL internet sessions. Pictures stopped opening altogether. I kept hoping it was just doing an adjustment period, but it was SO. SLOW… it was like having dial-up, again. So last week I gave up, forfeited the money, and went looking at free anti-virus programs, instead.

Anna & AntiVirus II. I started with Avira, which had free PC optimization and speed-up tools. I liked the program, but the optimization and tool features totally *DESTROYED* my very delicate Adobe PhotoDeluxe suite, that is SO. HARD. to get running, again. I was pissed. So I deleted Avira and tried I tried Avast, which timed out six times, just trying to upload it. Forget that. Moving on to AVG free: It’s interface wasn’t user-friendly and didn’t offer me choices, so THAT went out the window. On top of that, it uploaded a TON of stuff to my PC that I didn’t want, so I had to uninstall all of THAT crap, too. And of course, during all of this I have to uninstall, restart, disk clean-up, restart, uninstall, restart… and come to find out, TrendMicro gets pissy when you uninstall it, and leaves bits of itself on your PC that don’t jive with other anti-viruses, so I had to get a patch to completely uninstall Trend Micro, and that was a total mess. In the end? I got Avira and did NOT accept the optimization and tools, spent five hours getting back my Adobe Photodeluxe capabilities, and we’re okay, now. I think.

Work Weirdness. Brian’s got a WHOLE bunch of things going on in his work, lately. First, they spent the last month putting in a new super-ultra machine that he’s still trying to get a handle on. (Nobody knows how to run it, and it’s going to be his baby, mostly.) Then one of the two owning interests in the company sold his half to another company, and decided to retire. It was BIG news, because he ran the night shift, so now there’s a big night shift shake-down, too. My cousin is on night shift – he’s moving to days, next month, so that’s more big news. And the ‘Trode guy is out six weeks for surgery, so they’ve brought different people into his area to take up the slack, but… more craziness, y’know? And finally, the other owning interest has purchased the building next door, and is moving the company that Brian’s dad works for into it. So they’ll be working next door to each other. It’s just… total upheaval.

Letting out the LEGOs. This weekend, I caved and let the kids bring out the LEGOs. It’s been a long time, and they were seriously giddy about having them. I wasn’t sure how it’d go, but… it was okay. It’s been so nice without them, though. I really thought that they were so good, but really they’d become an obsession, and doing it in small doses, every once in a while is much better.

Moving Along… I have a fish tank to clean, so I’d best move this along. There’s always more to talk about, but… this is good, for now. Don’t you think?